Bank of America CEO gets big raise as stock tanks

NEW YORK (AP) — Bank of America gave its CEO a pay package worth $7.5 million last year, six times as large as the year before. It happened while the company's stock lost more than half its value and the bank lost its claim as the biggest in the country.

The package for CEO Brian Moynihan included a salary of $950,000, a $6.1 million stock award and about $420,000 worth of use of company aircraft and tax and financial advice.

The figures are according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing Wednesday. In 2010, Moynihan's pay package totaled $1.2 million.

The board said the stock award to Moynihan was justified because the bank turned a profit after losing money in 2010, and because it ended the year with a stronger balance sheet.

Moynihan, 52, took over as CEO in 2010. Besides the lawsuits, his first year was marked by mounting losses in credit cards and vastly reduced income from checking accounts. Bank of America lost $2.2 billion.

Last year, it fought a tide of lawsuits that cost the company $14 billion. Worried over how deep the mortgage problems were, the Federal Reserve refused to let Bank of America increase its stock dividend.

Its stock lost 58 percent of its value in 2011, and Bank of America lost the title of No. 1 bank by assets to JPMorgan Chase. However, Moynihan pledged to cut costs, focus the company and shed parts of the business, and he shuffled the management.

Bank of America posted earnings of $1.4 billion in 2011 and raised $34 billion by selling assets that it did not consider central to its business.

Meanwhile, the investment bank Jefferies Group said Wednesday that it paid its CEO, Richard Handler, $1.1 million last year, down from $47 million in 2010. Handler and another top executive offered to forgo their bonuses.

Investors lost confidence in Jefferies in November after the bankruptcy of MF Global, the brokerage once led by former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Investors were worried that Jefferies, like MF Global, was too exposed to European debt.

For all of 2011, Jefferies stock was down 48 percent.

The AP uses a calculation that isolates the value a company's board places on the CEO's total pay package. The figure includes salary, bonus, incentives, perks and the estimated value of stock options and awards.